Problem With RC Tenant

Buy a USPS-approved mailbox at Lowe's or Home Depot. You can install it yourself, but you will need to make arrangements with the Post Office to complete the installation with a keykeeper outside your building and their own universal lock on the indoor mailbox. The PO has a one-point delivery policy and actually prefers these indoor boxes. (One-point means that the carrier delivers only to a mailslot, indoor box, or box or gate under the stoop, and not to a combination of those). Your tenant will have a key to his own mailbox, but that's vastly different than unlimited access through the front door. BTW, be very careful about implementing various suggestions to change locks, deny access, opening the tenant's mailbox, etc.—many are outright violations of law and will bite you badly in housing court.

Posted by: vinca at April 2, 2009 3:35 PM

BoD: The USPS-approved box I'm talking about might be familiar to you from large apartment buildings (rows of boxes, most often aluminum or gold-colored). They're also available configured as only 3- or 4-unit boxes for small multiple dwellings. You install them in your vestibule—i.e. only people who have keys to the front door can access your mailboxes, and a tenant giving his friends a copy of his mailbox key won't be tantamount to giving them a copy of the front door key. If you're not familiar with the USPS keykeeper system, it works like this: they install a small box outside your front door that holds your front door key. Your carrier opens the keykeeper, opens your front door, and replaces the housekey in the locked keeper. The key to the *keykeeper* is a USPS-restricted key, same as the one they use to tilt down the indoor mailboxes. Neither you nor your tenant will ever own a copy of that USPS key. You might like DIBS idea, but if the situation is as contentious as OP describes, I doubt that you or OP would like to face the mail tampering charges that could follow from employing that strategy.

Posted by: vinca at April 2, 2009 4:21 PM

Bren's post, as well as some others, addresses a facet of this issue which most have left unaddressed, and which I'm not inclined to address at great length either.
OP, the building is YOUR home, and YOUR property, but the tenant's apartment is THEIR home, too, and you bought the building knowing their RC status. I doubt there's a person among us who has not made copies of their house keys for friends (in case of emergency, in case of vacation, in case family is visiting, whatever). After an ongoing situation in our building that bore only a superficial resemblance to yours, the remedy we implemented was to change the front door lock and keys to the “Multi-Lock” brand which (in theory) can only be duplicated by presenting a locksmith with the original combination. The lock itself and copies of the keys are pricey. Tenants who request extra copies are required to place a deposit and introduce us to the person to whom they’re giving the copy. All parties, including the guest keyholder, sign a written form acknowledging their understanding and agreement that the key is not to be passed to other parties without notification and introduction to landlord. This form also addresses who bears responsibility for the cost of replacing a tenant’s set of lost keys, as well as replacing keys for ALL tenants should it become necessary.

Our building has an intercom and no buzzer, and that’s clearly explained to prospective tenants before any lease is signed. To the best of my knowledge, the following still governs re: intercoms: Under the city's Housing Maintenance Code and Section 50a of the NYS Multiple Dwelling Law, a building with eight or more units built *after* Jan. 1, 1968, must be equipped with a voice intercom. In addition, in buildings with eight or more units built *before* 1968, a landlord must install and maintain a voice intercom system when a majority of the tenants request its installation. If you Google Section 50a of NYS MDL, you can read the entire section for yourself. In addition, the following is an old article, but worth reading (though maybe not twice, as the text repeats itself ;-): http://www.nytimes.com/1985/03/17/realestate/buttoning-down-a-building-a-guide-to-security.html

Posted by: vinca at April 2, 2009 8:56 PM

Bxgrl: In this case, you’re not much different from Rob. Rather than just make your point, you’re complaining on this thread about what Rob’s writing elsewhere. OP has never written that the RC tenant and friends are walking through his personal living space. If that’s the case, I’d like to see it specified. He’s complaining that anywhere the RC tenant and friends walk in the building constitute an invasion of his space, an affront to his ownership and a threat to his security. That’s a pretty clear window to me of OP’s inability to separate the business end of being a landlord from his personal likes and dislikes, and skew the argument into a threat to life, limb, family, home, motherhood and apple pie. Tenants are not children. Landlords CAN’T set curfews, limit friends, hours, work shifts, etc. The issues are much more in your face if your property is small and you and your tenants are next-door or vertical neighbors. But that situation existed before the purchase was made.

The best thing OP can do is rectify the environment and relationship with tenant to the greatest extent possible. Alternatively, OP can dig in, roll up his sleeves and enter a dragged-out, expensive battle in housing court, fully understanding he STILL might not get the outcome he wants. As to roommates, there are very specific laws governing that, too, and they’re not about tenant’s “property rights" and they vary depending on whether the apartment is rent controlled, regulated or unregulated. Anything a landlord writes into a lease which contravenes existing law is null and void. I have sympathy and personal experience dealing with tenants who play the margins of their leases. However this issue is a bit like buying a brownstone and then complaining that the facade is frail and needs repeated and expensive maintenance. It’s only a surprise to the new owner who didn’t understand the range of issues they’d be dealing with, and who resent it to some extent. It’s was never an unknown factor for an informed owner re: owning the building.

Posted by: vinca at April 3, 2009 11:01 AM

Bxgrl: I'm not responsible for the things you take personally, and you won't have the pleasure of sucking me into that debate. RC-tenant is not responsible for the things OP takes personally. You seemed to have entirely missed my suggestion to OP for securing his building. OP needs to separate the business of being an owner/landlord from his personal likes and dislikes. Is that so hard to understand? Not really. Is that so hard to implement? For many people, especially small landlords, yes it is. I wrote too quickly when I wrote about roommates and variances depending on regulated or unregulated status. The variance relates to amounts that can be charged for *sublets*; roommate situation depends on an entirely different set of factors.

Posted by: vinca at April 3, 2009 11:37 AM

OP: sorry, no sympathy from me at this point. You claim to be worried about security, but it hasn't been worth the investment for YOU to secure your front doors? You don't have to replace your front doors to put a lock on them. Attend to your obligations as owner/landlord.

Posted by: vinca at April 3, 2009 1:12 PM